Lindsey Graham talks GOP coming together, rally around Ted Cruz
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that his party needs to get behind a unity candidate to defeat Donald Trump, even if that means backing Ted Cruz, a senator who often finds himself at odds with his fellow GOP members of his chamber.
Graham told CNN he would choose to support the Texas Republican over the brash billionaire because Trump is an “interloper” and not a real Republican.
“Ted and I are in the same party. Donald Trump is an interloper,” Graham said. “I don’t trust him.”
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Graham said he believes Cruz represents a “form of conservatism that’s hard to sell to the general public.”
The senior South Carolina senator refused to say if he’d get behind Trump as the nominee.
“Ask me that after the convention. If he wins the Republican nomination, I will have to reconsider that,” he said.
He also added that if Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich lose their home states, they’ll lose the momentum they need to beat Trump for the Republican nomination.
“Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means,” Sen. Graham told CBS News late Tuesday, as Mr. Trump was on course to win seven states. But he added, “We may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump.”
Graham has said, at least half jokingly, that if someone killed Cruz “on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” That sentiment has been part of why a number of Republicans have moved toward another senator, Marco Rubio of Florida, as their best option for defeating Mr. Trump.
But late Tuesday, Graham suggested that the situation has become so dire that, at this point, the party should get behind Cruz.
“I can’t believe I would say yes. But yes,” he told the interviewer Charlie Rose.
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